“Is there something wrong with my mother? Is that why you've come?”
A decade's tension broke, and the story spilled as from a cracked dam. “So this is where you've been, this is what happened to you.”
“Is it my mother?”
“No, it's not your mother, though God knows why you don't go home, and why you felt the need to call and be so mysterious. It's not your mother, she's fine. It's the little visitor you sent her way who has become too much for her. There's been trouble at the school, and I am concerned, we are all worried about the child. She stood up in front of the entire third grade and claimed to be an angel of the Lord. She said an angel of destruction, and we thought that… was long over.” Reading the confusion in her niece's eyes, she turned to Maya. “Her mother does not know what to do with such a child.”
Stunned and remembering, her eyes welling with tears, Erica spoke in a rueful tone, so softly as to not wake a soul. “My baby—”
10
Norah could not stop talking about the bridge. From the moment on the monkeybars when she first saw its twin arches and fretwork of cables, precise and beautiful in the distance, she wanted to be close to its splendor. Beyond the circumscribed boundaries of the neighborhood, the bridge funneled traffic over the Monongahela morning and night, leading away from home and toward the city. She pleaded with Sean to tell her all about it. He had made the journey across many times by bus and by car—his father's people lived on the other side—but not as often lately and never on foot. The danger of the bridge was legendary. Parents warned their children of falling, of drowning, of disappearing forever, and young boys and girls were forbidden to go anywhere near it. Only the older teenagers, the toughs who knew all about sex and drugs and the meaning of curse words, flaunted the restriction. Yet the tall tales came as surely as summer vacation and ghost stories, of a boy who had been drinking too much beer, or a girl, full of shame and hopelessness, who slipped away into the waters by accident or design.
“Please, please,” she said. “Remember that peregrine flying around here in January? I'll bet its nest is up under the steelwork. They like the vantage of the highest point around.”
Sean studied the bruise on her face. “We'd get in trouble if they find out.”
“There's something I want to show you, and I guarantee none of the grown-ups will ever know.”
March brought mild temperatures, and on the month's first Saturday they escaped, announcing to Mrs. Quinn that they were going for a walk. Within an hour, they had strolled beyond the converted farmhouses with their small fenced yards, past the Craftsmen and half-timbered Tudors and Foursquares on more crowded streets, and on to the town proper. Built for the immigrant factory workers during the steel boom, the blocks of brownstones and storefronts now showed signs of neglect and early decay. The last of the mills ran only one furnace, and she was slated for demolition in the fall. Jobs had gone overseas, and only the old-timers hung around, drifting aimlessly between the VFW club and the cigar store where they bought lottery tickets and the afternoon's Press. Glass and cigarette butts littered the gutters, and scraps of paper blew across the cracked sidewalks. An Italian restaurant was shuttered and neglected. A toy shop that Sean remembered visiting with his father had been replaced by a job-training center. Across the street, behind the ornate scrollwork fencing of the Glass and Iron Workers Bank, a man sat against the brick wall with a brown bag between his legs, his face as vacant as a doll's.
Following the old streetcar tracks, they rounded a corner, and the bridge appeared all at once, much bigger and more imposing so close. The steel framework had been painted taxi yellow, and the capped rivets, big as a child's head, studded the beams and held it all together. The lattice arched into the pale blue sky, and as they crossed the street to its deck, the opposite shore momentarily disappeared from view. Norah hastened her step, bouncing with excitement, as Sean slowed, a queasy fear rumbling in his stomach. The walkway formed a narrow lane between two fences—a guard against the traffic, and a railing protecting travelers from the edge. She had moved six feet onto the lane before he realized she intended to cross.